G I L E M O R Y G A L A H A D
G I L E M O R Y G A L A H A DLocation: Infirmary Wing - P.R.C.U. CampusTake On Me #3.006: Pinned like a note in a hospital gown.
Interaction(s): N/A
The first few days were the hardest for Gil, unpicking Orcinus’ handiwork as he rediscovered his newly-fractured mind, lying in a lonely bed in the infirmary ward.
The first night, after delivery to medical staff, he stirred from oblivion into a dim room, his clothes changed, the ground beneath him no longer wet grass but dry and warm bedsheets. He had awoken on the other side of despair and such a sheer acceptance of death that the realisation he had survived was as equal parts disappointment as it was relief. He merely lay in the dark, each breath a freshly laboured agony, and willed himself to slip back beneath the vale of consciousness, whether through sleep or death, each feeling as merciful as the other.
The second day he had woken with a start, his spasmodic jump into wakefulness triggering new pain that only sharpened his mind. The sun was up and activity buzzed lowly beyond the door of his room; he swept his gaze around his fresh surroundings and realised he had been sepulchred in the university’s hospital ward, patched and gauzed and stitched and bandaged and set. He felt the cloying pressure of medical dressings all about his person, and found his lower leg and foot entombed within a cast of their own; a vague recollection of a sharp cracking stomp troubled him briefly before he pushed it out of mind.
Someone had delivered him breakfast, gracefully without stirring him; it was the mug that piqued his interest, finding his mouth sticky and sour with dehydration, despite the saline drip-tube that protruded from his arm. He reached for it, wrapping a careful hand around the ceramic body to gauge how much heat remained in the beverage within, and found it to be enough. Gingerly, steadily, he raised it to his lips and supped deeply; the liquid was earthy and sugary and quenching - greedily, he drained the mug, slaking himself and enjoying the grounding flavour. It was only out of the corner of his eye, the very limits of his periphery, that he noticed movement as he set the mug down, and as Gil turned to look, panic gripped him with ferocity and he reflexively launched the mug with self-sabotaging vigour, his injured body protesting at every inch against the sudden and aggressive movement.
The mug found its mark square and true, and shattered against the silvered glass of the mirror set upon the wall, which shattered in kind from the impact. Splinters criss-crossed across its surface and where there had been just one Gil staring back at him - haggard, maimed, gaunt, and hollow-eyed - there were now scores upon scores, every one a spectre of anguish and hatred.
Lorcán had visited that day for the first time, though he did not find Gil to be a welcoming bedfellow, instead uncharacteristically reticent and withdrawn. Lorcán did not mention the splintered mirror, if indeed he noticed it at all; but the nurse who came in after he’d left removed it without comment or expression, and it was not replaced.
The second night was lonelier than the first, and sleep came no less difficult. With the day bringing the bustle of people to, from, and around his room, he felt their absence that much more keenly in the silvery moonlight. In the midst of paranoia and forlorn isolation, Gil made a decision he'd been warned against by both his medical attendants and his own subconscious: he mustered all the strength he could from the depths of his wounded body, and with desperation for companionship in whatever form, pushed forth a clone. His body protested the effort immediately; his heart rate spiked dangerously and the ECG monitor he was hooked up to raised an alert accordingly. The on-call nurse burst in swiftly, mere minutes later, but was shocked into hesitation by the condition she found her patient in.
Gil was out of bed, arm bleeding where the IV had been ripped out in the fracas, wrestling on the floor with a copy of himself in a medley of skin and bandages.
One of the Gils managed to break away from the melee, attempting to escape the room, but was in no physical condition to do so even without the preceding brawl. Before her very eyes, the copy of Gil began to disintegrate, flaking away at the extremities. Gil himself couldn’t stop screaming about the Him With No Face, about the hateful imposter that needed killing before it could turn the same intention upon him, about the self-produced assassin bent on his destruction.
All the nurse saw, staring into the very-much-there face of a decomposing copy of her patient, was fear in the eyes.
Gil was sedated and returned to bed, and he slept through the third day.
Waking up on the fourth day, Gil found himself fiddling with his phone. There was a swathe of missed calls and unread texts. The university had provided a statement to the Coast Guard and the Canadian Government in the wake of Orcinus' sabotage and attack, the Harbinger's fatal explosion rocking the island naturally drawing the attention of the outside authorities. Much as H.E.L.P. and H.I.T. liked to keep things in-house, there were limits to what they were able to keep to themselves. News of the assault on their campus by Hyperion's Children wasn't well-received, but it was kept out of major news circuits; still readily available to the public, but only found by those who went looking.
Unfortunately for Gil, still fragile physically and mentally, Artie and Elle were people who went looking, and both expressed their concern for his wellbeing through frantic messages and missed phone calls. He stared at his phone screen. Artie was one thing; bitterness rose within Gil, confident to the point of enmity that his agent's only real concern was whether Gil was fit for on-screen appearances. He didn't want to broach whether he even cared about returning to the industry anymore with himself, let alone Arthur.
Elle was a different matter; the previous rose-tinted memories had been replaced with sharper, far nastier images, accompanied by spiteful words and still-tender actual injury. He knew, rationally, that she was truly concerned for his health; but right now, rationality was in short supply, and it was the paranoid abstract that seized him instead, demanding that this was simply a way to finish the job.
He returned no calls, replied to no texts, and ignored any further that came through for the rest of the day. Lorcán returned, but Gil remained taciturn and distant; the visit was shorter than the previous, but no less frustrating for either party, and once again Gil found himself alone and frightened as the sun sank beyond his window.
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